that's the stupidest characterization of what i said. you clearly don't get it.

I find it quite honest..

Bottom line is you have a problem with who is paying blockstream devs for their work. My question is why should one "contractor" be trusted more than the other?

i've already gone over this a dozen times for you. the financial arrangements are totally different.

Care to provide me with a copy of the contractual arrangement of any developer being paid to work on Bitcoin core? Have you seen specifics of Gavin or Brian Forde's contract with MIT? Yep, didn't think so.

As far as I know only the Blockstream team has been transparent enough to provide detailed information about specific clauses of their contract. See, this to me is a respectable example of someone willing to step forward and at least provide some fact that can support their general statements about behaving in good faith.

"I believe this will be the ultimate fate of Bitcoin, to be the "high-powered money" that serves as a reserve currency for banks that issue their own digital cash." Hal Finney, Dec. 2010

I too believe they are being genuine in their concerns; and I believe they really think that increasing the block size limit would be bad. I disagree with them, but I don't think they have malicious intentions.

They do have a conflict of interest though. And it's not even a big deal provided they openly acknowledge that fact!

I too believe they are being genuine in their concerns; and I believe they really think that increasing the block size limit would be bad. I disagree with them, but I don't think they have malicious intentions.

They do have a conflict of interest though. And it's not even a big deal provided they openly acknowledge that fact!

It's ironic the degree to which your superstitions mirror the ones described by Lloyd de Mause in the link I provided.

This is not mythology, this is reality:

Private property rules are always guaranteed by organized violence of the state mafia.

The idea of private property is a meme, it all starts when one can justify denying land to some but not others with the use of a moral code, it is effectively enforced through force, the effectiveness of the meme, is those who are deprived very often understand the meme better than they the natural order of property.

Yes, new 'moral' code enforced through brute force. A post-paleolitic new moral that lead to collectivism via destruction of the nuclear community, the anarchist, self-sufficient life style. From anarchy to patriarchy.

A former 'austrian' who knows better since he studied history as nobody did before:

"Private property as de iure institution needs a foregoing state to come into existence. The state needs foregoing power and foregoing power needs armed force. The ultimate “foundation of the economy” thus is the weapon, where possession and property are identical because the possession of it guarantees property of it. Armed force starts additional production (surplus, tribute). The first taxes are contributions of material for the production of attack weapons (copper, tin). Thus non-circulating money begins. Taxes as “census” and money are the same."

As soon as defence and protection of the (property-)title power executed by armed force in war and peace needs mercenaries (soldiers from outside the power system) the one-way-money turns into circulating “genuine money” in modern sense and its material changes from weapon-fitting to precious metal and actually into any material which can be monopolized by the state. Interest also at first is the tax (census) itself. The state, that must exist before property and property-based contracts which only can be executed with use of armed force, can’t be financed out of property or income which can only appear after its existence. Therefore the state faces the problem of pre-financing itself (power, sovereignty) and it must draw on later tributes or taxes. This “interest”, which always starts with power-based and never with “private” titles is nothing but a discount, thereby rather a discount of the state-owned property (monopoly of armed force) or property rights (monopoly of taxation) than any private “property premium” or even an mysterious item that “enlarges” something."

The output of rain forest people doesn't grow because their culture haven't evolved private property rules, it is no related to debt.

There are a few prerequisites needed before people can start producing economic surplus.

Tribal people in rain forests haven't yet figured out how to not routinely murder each other, so learning how to not respect property is still a ways off.

This link does not describe pre-patriarchal, anarchist human being. It describes the life style of gated communities within a civilized environment around it. Paleolitic, pre-patriarchal, anarchist life style was completely different.

Maternal incest is what is behind the cross-cultural finding by anthropologists that “where the mother sleeps closer to the baby than to the father and uses the baby as a substitute spouse, there is more homicide and a higher frequency of war.”5

Crazy science. A 'spouse' and a 'father' did not exist in the paleolitic anarchist environment, because nobody knew the begetter. It seems that those psychologists know nothing about the former anarchist life. They are believers of the post-paleolitic monogamous joke, called 'life'.And you, Justus, are promoting such 'science'? I thought at least you are an anarchist. And now you argue against those people who have not been nationalized yet, with this pseudo science of the establishment.

I was reading Armstrong's blog daily as of August 2012 when (it was roughly 12,000) he clearly stated that either it would double before October 2015, or it would phase shift and align with private assets and then delay that double or triple until 2017. Indeed the USA stock market did rise to roughly 18,000 and then it phase shifted and so now we await the double or triple in 2017.

Funny.He really predicted a lot of funny things:

Prediction April 2013:

Slovenia will collapse from a spending spree, not because it invested in Euro bonds.(...)It is true that Slovenia is not Cyprus. It is worse.

He did not state of date for the collapse. Slovenia's economy shrunk considerably in 2013 and since then is having a real estate rebound as foreigners park capital there which is temporarily driving up their GDP and watch what happens after October.

When the foreign buyers are gone, then watch for his prediction to come true.

Also you need to differentiate between speculation and actual predictions. He was clearly speculating by the "?" in the title of the blog post. And no where did he show a computer model. This was his personal speculation and expressing his angst about EU dictatorship.

When I relate to Armstrong's predictions, it is those that are made by the computer model and reiterated over numerous blog posts, not some quip in one blog post you dredged up to try to prove you are a jealous nutcase.

Also Armstrong may just have a myopia on Slovenia, which wouldn't the first time that his personal speculations suck. I trust more his computer model and his interpretations of it.

Slovenians are smart people. The could the exact opposite of the British. You don't see much binge drinking in Ljubljana, and when the Brits are big spenders, the Slovenians are big savers. They're the people who make you believe in Europe. If there ware only Germans, Slovenians, Estonians and people like that in the EU, it would rule the world. Unfortunately, people like the Greeks or the French are wrecking it.

A bad thing is when people like cypherdoc derive from the conflict of interest malicious intents without proof other than "I don't trust them"

What actually happened is that when Blockstream was announced multiple noted that it created the appearance of a potential conflict of interest.

Instead of acknowledging this potential (fairly standard practice in many business situations!), the Blockstream founders took the bizarre route of denying even the possibility of a conflict of interest.

That choice of actions is what lead to ongoing concern about their motives, not the founding of Blockstream itself.

A bad thing is when people like cypherdoc derive from the conflict of interest malicious intents without proof other than "I don't trust them"

What actually happened is that when Blockstream was announced multiple noted that it created the appearance of a potential conflict of interest.

Instead of acknowledging this potential (fairly standard practice in many business situations!), the Blockstream founders took the bizarre route of denying even the possibility of a conflict of interest.

That choice of actions is what lead to ongoing concern about their motives, not the founding of Blockstream itself.

There clearly were some accurate acknowledgements of potential conflicts of interests in that Reddit post.

Quote

Specifically for the risk of sidechains replacing the main chain: do you think that the bitcoin economy would move their coins to a chain controlled by a single company? They'd be idiots if they did.

But now we fear that the economy will be forced to because of a refusal to scale the main chain. Given a choice between no business at all and a dangerous "idiots" move, companies will pick the "idiot" move and hope for the best.

Quote

And if there is a specific issue where you think I (or anyone else) is being partial because of a conflict of interest: please yell.

OK now we are yelling. The Bitcoin blockchain was never intended to permanently remain at a max size of 1MB. Tons of historical posts show this and show that Satoshi and others of that time were fully cognizant of the partial centralization that might ensue (e.g. full nodes are not practical at home and must move to the cloud). I do not need to repeat these.

So if you want a small-sized chain, why don't you create a sidechain with a low block limit?

Is there ANYONE out there who is:1. not a miner 2. does not have mining investments3. is not affiliated with BlockstremAnd4. wants to keep the block size at 1MB?

an anonymous person hard forks the current Bitcoin code with the only change being a lifting of the limit. he provably destroys the commit key (a Bitcoin private key) over at github thru a op_return spend. the result being a Bitcoin source code with no core devs and thus no ability to change it going forward. would that be enough to carry Bitcoin forward for the next century?

if anything needed to be changed in an emergency going forward, anonymous person #2 could do the same thing.

A bad thing is when people like cypherdoc derive from the conflict of interest malicious intents without proof other than "I don't trust them"

What actually happened is that when Blockstream was announced multiple noted that it created the appearance of a potential conflict of interest.

Instead of acknowledging this potential (fairly standard practice in many business situations!), the Blockstream founders took the bizarre route of denying even the possibility of a conflict of interest.

That choice of actions is what lead to ongoing concern about their motives, not the founding of Blockstream itself.

There clearly were some accurate acknowledgements of potential conflicts of interests in that Reddit post.

Quote

Specifically for the risk of sidechains replacing the main chain: do you think that the bitcoin economy would move their coins to a chain controlled by a single company? They'd be idiots if they did.

But now we fear that the economy will be forced to because of a refusal to scale the main chain. Given a choice between no business at all and a dangerous "idiots" move, companies will pick the "idiot" move and hope for the best.

Quote

And if there is a specific issue where you think I (or anyone else) is being partial because of a conflict of interest: please yell.

OK now we are yelling. The Bitcoin blockchain was never intended to permanently remain at a max size of 1MB. Tons of historical posts show this and show that Satoshi and others of that time were fully cognizant of the partial centralization that might ensue (e.g. full nodes are not practical at home and must move to the cloud). I do not need to repeat these.

So if you want a small-sized chain, why don't you create a sidechain with a low block limit?

Is there ANYONE out there who is:1. not a miner 2. does not have mining investments3. is not affiliated with BlockstremAnd4. wants to keep the block size at 1MB?

Yet another argumentum ad populum. Reminder that this is not a vote and that we should avoid any form of "democratic" outcome.

OUR CURRENT ALTERNATIVES SUCKI refer to our conversation / information alternatives: /r/bitcoin, mailing lists, and chatrooms. They don’t work and their problems will deepen as BTC becomes more popular and more valuable (threatening).

The Basics

Let’s breeze through the currently known problems with the alternatives, mainly r/bitcoin: that those who seek expertise can’t validate (or even identify) what they read, those with expertise report frustration at having their views de-emphasized or misrepresented, bias goes undetected (or over-detected), conversations are duplicated (or misplaced), falling signal-to-noise ratios invite a septic futility into each stultified conversation. Almost no one is polite, and, in fact, everyone generally behaves in a way that would drive off any Thinking Person (but if they weren’t so critical, things might even be worse).

The Do-er Alone Learneth

OK, let’s take it to the next level. After all, this is the governance of Bitcoin we’re talking about.

On the subreddit/mailing-list a few people write, and many people read.

SocratesThe (spoken) thoughts of Socrates on the written word are worth mentioning:

“For this invention [writing] … You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise. … He who thinks, then, that he has left behind him any art in writing, and he who receives it in the belief that anything in writing will be clear and certain, would be an utterly simple person, and in truth ignorant of the prophecy of Ammon, if he thinks written words are of any use except to remind him-who-knows the matter about which they are written.” –(Socrates, Phaedrus 274c-275b, emphasis added)

Occasionally, reddit is used to enable a dialogue (the “AMA”). In such cases, everyone who asked a question would probably merit Socrates’ approval. On mailing lists, the Q&A are seemingly the only relevant sections of the entire discussion (other than to state mind-numbing tautologies like “we must be careful” or “Bitcoin won’t scale the way it is configured right now”).

My personal opinion is that, from the entire blocksize “discussion” thus far, I have (reliably) learned almost nothing. If anything, I have only learned about who, individually, I dislike (which does not really help with the underlying blocksize question). The state of the debate seems to reflect no technical info whatsoever, instead merely the ratio of BigBlock-Users (users who pay transaction fees, but do not run nodes) to SmallBlock-Users (those who run full nodes, but do not pay transaction fees), and who was friends with who before the conversation started.

The Internet is Not Representative

Haven’t you noticed a big difference between arguments experienced in real life, and arguments experienced on the internet? While the real-life arguments ultimately produce the phenomenon of “agreement”, netizens seem more contentious.

InternetWrong

I think that this is because of “free exit”: those who learn the answer leave the conversation (and do so without altering the conversation’s state: no having to admit that they were wrong, no feeling obligated to go back and convince others, etc). Say a website has 10,000,000 viewers, of which 5,000 agree with a given statement, and 5 disagree. What will the public see in the comments section? 1 principal dissenter arguing with 1 principal endorser (9,999,998 free-exits)…until? If one arguer drops out, another is likely to take his place. Observers will have no easy way to tell when (if) the debate has concluded, or what the conclusion was. On the internet, no one can tell how many people agree with something.

....

For example, almost every technical person has given up on Proof of Stake, to the point where it is openly laughed at and ridiculed at conferences. But you wouldn’t know it from The Internet, where it seems like “pro-PoS” and “anti-PoS” are each one of two equally-endorsed points of view. The technical elite are simply tired of repeating themselves.

Yet the voice of The Market speaks tirelessly. The PoS holdouts struggle to obtain 1/250th of Bitcoin’s marketcap, and –even more telling for an upstart– command almost none of the space’s VC funding / capital investment. They consistently lose to completely-valueless Copycoins like Litecoin and Dogecoin.

"I believe this will be the ultimate fate of Bitcoin, to be the "high-powered money" that serves as a reserve currency for banks that issue their own digital cash." Hal Finney, Dec. 2010

And the hits keep coming for the dangerous experiment of maintaining artificially constrained blocks. From 2009-14 Bitcoin functioned with no effective block size limit and mining decentralization post-ASIC was improving. Now, in 2015, that this latent piece of software is allowed to take effect the unintended consequences rear up:(my bold emphasis below)

I suspect we agree that should 1MB blocks become an undeniably urgent concern (EG, if we see actual congestion resulting in appropriate fees no longer prioritizing their tx) the controversy will rapidly dissipate and be replaced by emergent rough consensus.

no, the eye doctor says you're a blind fool.

Why do you say that?

Do you believe the controversy will *not* rapidly dissipate and be replaced by emergent rough consensus, should 1MB blocks become an undeniably urgent concern?

you and the other Cripplecoiner's are blind fools to what is happening right now as a result of the 1MB choke you are inflicting on Bitcoin. you don't have the vision to determine when there is urgency.

Bitcoin is intentionally designed to be ungovernable and governance-free. luke-jr 2016Blocks must necessarily be full for the Bitcoin network to be able to pay for its own security. davout 2015Blocksize is an intentionally limited resource, like the 21e6 BTC limit. Changing it degrades the surrounding economics, creating negative incentives. Jeff Garzik 2013

I suspect we agree that should 1MB blocks become an undeniably urgent concern (EG, if we see actual congestion resulting in appropriate fees no longer prioritizing their tx) the controversy will rapidly dissipate and be replaced by emergent rough consensus.

no, the eye doctor says you're a blind fool.

Why do you say that?

Do you believe the controversy will *not* rapidly dissipate and be replaced by emergent rough consensus, should 1MB blocks become an undeniably urgent concern?

you and the other Cripplecoiner's are blind fools to what is happening right now as a result of the 1MB choke you are inflicting on Bitcoin. you don't have the vision to determine when there is urgency.

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it seems like you are defining actual congestion as "zero/low fee tx not being sufficiently subsidized by block size."

Please correct my blindness, good doctor.

1. mempool: 57000 0conf-Statoshi, 11000 Tradeblock2. avg wait time for 0confs=45-60 min Chain.so3. Mycelium no longer able to prioritize fees4. continued complaints on Reddit of stuck tx's even with higher fees.5. continuous stream of full blocks and functioning full nodes indicative that the capacity for bigger blocks exists today.6. TPS able to spike to >100 when needed indicative of greater bandwidth than initially thought.7. continued lack of wallet development for fee feedback.8. full blocks creating new deviant behavior.

Bitcoin is intentionally designed to be ungovernable and governance-free. luke-jr 2016Blocks must necessarily be full for the Bitcoin network to be able to pay for its own security. davout 2015Blocksize is an intentionally limited resource, like the 21e6 BTC limit. Changing it degrades the surrounding economics, creating negative incentives. Jeff Garzik 2013

1. mempool: 57000 0conf-Statoshi, 11000 Tradeblock2. avg wait time for 0confs=45-60 min Chain.so3. Mycelium no longer able to prioritize fees4. continued complaints on Reddit of stuck tx's even with higher fees.5. continuous stream of full blocks and functioning full nodes indicative that the capacity for bigger blocks exists today.6. TPS able to spike to >100 when needed indicative of greater bandwidth than initially thought.7. continued lack of wallet development for fee feedback.8. full blocks creating new deviant behavior.

Bitcoin is intentionally designed to be ungovernable and governance-free. luke-jr 2016Blocks must necessarily be full for the Bitcoin network to be able to pay for its own security. davout 2015Blocksize is an intentionally limited resource, like the 21e6 BTC limit. Changing it degrades the surrounding economics, creating negative incentives. Jeff Garzik 2013

1. mempool: 57000 0conf-Statoshi, 11000 Tradeblock2. avg wait time for 0confs=45-60 min Chain.so3. Mycelium no longer able to prioritize fees4. continued complaints on Reddit of stuck tx's even with higher fees.5. continuous stream of full blocks and functioning full nodes indicative that the capacity for bigger blocks exists today.6. TPS able to spike to >100 when needed indicative of greater bandwidth than initially thought.7. continued lack of wallet development for fee feedback.8. full blocks creating new deviant behavior.